Lashing Out

With the Michael Cohen Drama Escalating, Trump Lashes Out at The New York Times

A New York Times article published Friday laid out Donald Trump’s pattern of bullying Michael Cohen, with eye-popping details and quotes from Trump insiders, like this one from Roger Stone: “Donald goes out of his way to treat him like garbage.” On Saturday morning, the president—who won’t be attending Barbara Bush’s funeral alongside his wife, “out of respect”—woke up and, what else, lashed out on Twitter, with a particularly laughable claim about one of the Times article’s writers, Maggie Haberman:

Haberman, who won a Pulitzer earlier this month for reporting on Trump, has interviewed the president on numerous occasions. There’s even a picture of the two of them posing together in the White House:

The article, which Haberman wrote along with Sharon LaFraniere and Danny Hakim, suggests that after years of being underestimated and berated by Trump, Cohen finally has the upper hand. “Mr. Trump’s lawyers and advisers have become resigned to the strong possibility that Mr. Cohen, who has a wife and two children and faces the prospect of devastating legal fees, if not criminal charges, could end up cooperating with federal officials who are investigating him for activity that could relate, at least in part, to work he did for Mr. Trump,” the Times story notes. Cohen’s home was raided by the F.B.I. on April 9 and authorities collected thousands of documents, his computer, and his phone. As Vanity Fairreported this week, Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for Stormy Daniels, believes “Michael Cohen is going to be indicted for some very serious, pervasive conduct.” And under a threat like that, a flip seems likely—something Trump may be trying to avoid by leaping to Cohen’s defense on Twitter.

A few minutes after Trump posted his tweets, Haberman posted one of her own, with a piece of information about the president she’d received while researching for the article: “When I was reporting this story, I said to one person who’s observed the Cohen-Trump relationship that Trump has been abusive to him. The person replied, ‘He’s abusive to everybody.’”